Hemlock Bay

when Lily had insisted on returning here after recuperating with their mother. She’d seemed just fine, wanted to be with her husband again, and he’d thought, I would want to be with Sherlock, too, and he’d seen her off at Reagan Airport with the rest of the family. Tennyson Frasier seemed to adore her, and Lily, it seemed then to Savich, had adored him as well.
    During the months she was home, she hadn’t ever called to complain, to ask for help. Her e-mails were invariably upbeat. And whenever he and Sherlock had called, she’d always sounded cheerful.
    And now, all these months later, this happened. He should have done something then, shouldn’t have just kissed her and waved her onto the flight to take her three thousand miles away from her family. To take her back to where Beth had been killed.
    He looked down to see Sherlock squeezing his hand. There was immense love in her eyes and she said only, “We will fix things, Dillon. This time we’ll fix things.”
    He nodded and said, “I really want to see Lily’s in-laws again, don’t you, Sherlock? I have this feeling that perhaps we really don’t know them at all.”
    “Agreed. We can check them out after we’ve seen Lily.”
    At the Hemlock County Hospital, everything was quiet. When they reached Lily’s room, they heard the sound of voices and paused at the door for a moment.
    It was Tennyson.
    And Elcott Frasier, his father.
    Elcott Frasier was saying, his voice all mournful, “Lily, we’re so relieved that you survived that crash. It was really dicey there for a while, but you managed to pull through. I can’t tell you how worried Charlotte has been, crying, wringing her hands, talking about her little Lily dying and how dreadful it would be, particularly such a short time after little Beth died. The Explorer, though, it’s totaled.”
    That, Savich thought, was the strangest declaration of caring he’d ever heard.
    “It’s very nice of all of you to be concerned,” Lily said, and Savich heard the pain in her voice, and something else. Was it fear? Dislike? He didn’t know. She said, “I’m very sorry that I wrecked the Explorer.”
    “I don’t want you to worry about it, Lily,” Tennyson said and took her hand. It was limp, Savich saw, she wasn’t returning any pressure.
    “I’ll buy you another one. A gift from me to you, my beautiful little daughter-in-law,” Elcott said.
    “I don’t want another Explorer,” she said.
    “No, of course not,” continued Elcott. “Another Explorer would remind you of the accident, wouldn’t it? We don’t want that. We want you to get well. Oh yes, we’ll do anything to get you well again, Lily. Just this morning, Charlotte was telling me how everyone in Hemlock Bay was talking about it, calling her, commiserating. She’s very upset by it all.”
    Savich, quite simply, wanted to throw Elcott Frasier out the window. He knew Frasier was tough as nails, that he was a powerful man, but Savich was surprised that he hadn’t been a bit more subtle, not this in-your-face bludgeoning. Why? Why this gratuitous cruelty?
    Savich walked into the room like a man bent on violence until he saw his sister’s white face, the pain that glazed her eyes, and he calmed immediately. He ignored the men, walked right to the bed, and leaned down, pressed his forehead lightly against hers.
    “You hurt, kiddo?”
    “Just a bit,” she whispered, as if she were afraid to speak up. “Well, actually a whole lot. It’s not too awful if I don’t breathe too deeply or laugh or cry.”
    “More than a bit, I’d say,” Savich said. “I’m going to find Dr. Larch and get you some more medication.” He nodded to Sherlock and was out the door.
    Sherlock smiled brightly at both her brother-in-law and Elcott Frasier. He looked the same as he had the first time she’d met him, eleven months before—tall, a bit of a paunch, a full head of thick, white hair, wavy, quite attractive. His eyes were his son’s—light blue, reflective, slightly slanted. She wondered what his vices were, wondered if he really loved Lily and wanted her well. But why wouldn’t he? Lily had been his son’s wife for eleven months now. She was sweet, loving, very talented, and she’d lost her only child and fallen into a deep well of grief and depression.
    She knew Elcott was sixty, but he looked no older than mid-fifties. He’d been a handsome man when he was younger, perhaps as handsome as his only son.
    There was a daughter as